Shaman's Curse

by Audrey Faye

  That wasn’t spoken in the tones of a local contact trying to be helpful to a Fixer. It was spoken in the tones of a leader who had her own agenda. I kept quiet—and added learning more about the Sisters to my mental to-do list.

  I took a deep breath—the small boy and Elleni had done a good job of distracting me from the press of humanity and the crush of energies and auras that came with them, but my body was still reacting to those pressures even if my head had managed to stay relatively clear. I pulled in my personal energies as tightly as I could bear and then breathed the strength of jungle roots into the outer edges. Roots that found a way to the nutrients they needed and didn’t let anything get in the way. Then I added small pulses to the surface, a trick I’d picked up from a Shaman who spent a lot of time in the core.

  Elleni blinked beside me. “You’ll have to teach me how you do that.”

  The rules said my next communication should be back to KarmaCorp, calling in the Seekers. Fortunately, I’d grown up in a tribal society very clear on when the rules should be broken, and this was one of those times. Elleni was no danger to anyone, not with the kind of serene vibrational cloak she wore. It spoke of training and control at least as deep as mine.

  Her lips slid into a faint smile as if she’d tracked the traveling of my thoughts.

  I shrugged and tossed the rulebook out the window. “I’ll show you that if you show me your cloaking trick.” Her energy had some kind of crystalline-hard outer shell to it, which was something I knew how to do—but hers didn’t cause any distress to people who bumped up against it, and that wasn’t something any Shaman I knew thought was possible.

  She was still watching me, her brown eyes unconcerned and unblinking.

  I met her gaze in the way of the grandmothers. “So, how did you come to be the local contact for this assignment?”

  Her lips formed another faint smile. “I asked.”

  I wasn’t familiar with all the inner workings of Yesenia’s office, but I’d have laid a very large bet that she didn’t generally select hand-waving volunteers. Local contacts were too crucial, and very few people had the appropriate personality mix of competent and lacking in curiosity. They were facilitators, not sidekicks, and many people found that a difficult balance to strike when a Fixer landed in their lap.

  I looked over at Elleni again. Even on such short acquaintance, it was very obvious she was both competent and curious. Which meant I needed to keep my eyes wide open, because a local contact with an agenda of her own could be anything between troublesome and useful, with a sizable side helping of dangerous.

  Especially when that person could have very easily stood in my Shaman shoes.

  7

  Elleni guided me over to an incredible reproduction stone gate and bowed until her head was level with my shoulders. “Welcome to the Temple of the Sisters, honored guest. We hope your heart will find peace here, and your mind wisdom.”

  I grew up tribal—I knew the power of ritual. And I’d done a bit of my own homework. “I am blessed to be invited to your table. My stories are yours to learn, if you wish.”

  Elleni beamed at my answer to her greeting. It was the one given by those who felt close affinity to the Sisters, rather than just a traveler taking advantage of their hospitality, and I’d chosen it carefully. She opened the gate, and it slid wide with only the barest whisper of sound, opening into a small garden the Lightbodies would have been very proud to call their own.

  I stepped in reverently and let the gate close at my back. The moment it did, the sounds of the outside world vanished. I raised a sharp eyebrow at Elleni.

  Her cheeks dimpled. “We take full advantage of technology where it serves us.” She slid her simple sandals off her feet and set them in a notched shelf by the gate. “We leave the dust of the world behind us. If bare feet don’t suit you, we have slippers for your use.”

  I laughed as she indicated where the slippers lived, but made no move to procure myself a pair. “I met my first pair of shoes when I was ten rotations old.” I got rid of my shoes with unbecoming haste and hovered my toes over a luscious patch of mossy grass. “May I?”

  She laughed. “That’s what it’s there for.”

  I stepped onto the green square barely big enough to hold both my feet and groaned as I sank in nearly to my ankles. Whoever had made this knew exactly how to honor the great mother. I crouched down and let my fingers sink in beside my feet.

  “Ah.” Elleni’s voice was full of pleasure. “That’s done lovely things for your aura.”

  I felt like I’d drunk a cup of dreaming tea. “How many people do you have to remove from here with a crane lift?”

  She chuckled. “Not many. Most who appreciate it as thoroughly as you do never make it this deep into the core worlds.”

  I stepped off the grass very reluctantly. Sharing was a virtue I wished I didn’t have quite so much of at this exact moment.

  Elleni reached down and patted the grass with an open palm. “I grew up in sand and sun, so this isn’t where I draw my comfort. But you’re welcome to all it can offer you, as often and for as long as you like.”

  It would water me while I was here. I closed my eyes and let my gratitude show. “Please, who does the work of supporting the garden?”

  “Your words are chosen well.” Elleni pulled over two low stools. “Here. We can sit a while with our toes in the grass if you like. All of us lend a hand when we can, but Astrin and Magali are the two who spend the most time tending to what grows here.”

  I took a seat and let my feet rest on the grass, more lightly this time, but no less gratefully. “If either of them ever wanted to visit others who share their passion for green growing things, there’s a family of gardeners on Stardust Prime who would welcome them with open arms and all the seed pods they can carry back.”

  Elleni’s eyes flashed with the delight of one who recognizes a very carefully chosen gift. “Astrin claims she’s too old to travel, but Magali is young and loves to learn new things.”

  I phrased my next question carefully. “Does she have your skill with auras?” Stardust Prime had plenty of Seekers traveling through, and plenty of others who wouldn’t miss a Shaman in their midst, no matter what she might call herself.

  “No. She has our teachings, of course, but very few of us can actually see auras, and fewer still can work with them. Her gifts are with the plants.”

  My toes nuzzled deeper into their green spa. “They certainly are.”

  She laughed, and then cut off abruptly and turned to look over her shoulder. “What is it, child?”

  A woman at least my age stepped forward from the shadows. “There’s a man at the front door, Sister. He claims he is from the Epsilon Conglomerate and he’s here to speak with our guest.”

  Elleni frowned. “There’s a male scientist at our door?”

  I shared her surprise. That was bizarre on several levels.

  The younger woman nodded. “He seems quite genuine, and—” She paused a breath and frowned, casting a careful glance at me. “—and his peace is disturbed.”

  I didn’t need anyone to explain what that meant. Aura readers might be relatively rare in the Order of the Sisters, but I was clearly in the presence of two of them. I sent a light wave of calm toward the new arrival, letting her know that I saw, and I was no threat.

  She smiled and tipped her head down, but the frayed edges of her spirit web smoothed.

  “Thank you, Chellie. We’ll go collect him at the door.” Elleni raised an eyebrow at me. “There’s a coffee shop just down the street if you can bear to put your shoes back on, or we have a front room we could use for a meeting.”

  My debt of gratitude was going to reach the sky before this day was over. “For entirely selfish reasons, I would much appreciate the use of your front room.”

  Her smile was small—and firm. “The use of it comes complete with my presence in the corner.”

  I’d already tossed out the rulebook. “I assumed no less.” />
  -o0o-

  I sat on a low gel-stool in the Order’s front room and waited for Elleni to return with our guest. It wasn’t unusual for people to seek a private audience with an arriving Fixer—generally someone with an overblown sense of their own importance.

  It was clear the moment this visitor walked in that he didn’t fit into that category. He was a small man with thinning hair, clothing that would fade into the background on most worlds, eyes that spoke of kindness and fear—and a spirit web with enough damage to sharply straighten my spine.

  He looked around the room and exhaled like a man who hadn’t breathed since the day he was born. “It feels beautiful in here. So quiet.”

  Elleni and I exchanged glances. She set a hand gently on the man’s shoulder. “Raven, this is Jonas.” She guided him to a low stool near mine and took a seat on a third one, the last of the furniture in the sparsely furnished room.

  Jonas sat quietly and breathed, and his face wore a look I’d last seen in the vid of a gorilla held in captivity for most of her life and finally set free.

  Elleni leaned forward and set her hand on his knee. “Is there any history of psychic gifts in your family, Jonas?”

  “My mother.” He answered readily, and without any trace of embarrassment. “But I don’t share her gifts. I was tested. I have weak elevations in my sensory receptiveness scores, nothing more. Not enough to be trainable.”

  Elleni glanced at me, most of her attention focused on reading his bruised energies. “Jonas is a technician at Epsi. He works on the Harmonium project.”

  I suppressed a shiver. If the tech impacted weak sensitives, my assignment had just gotten logarithmically harder.

  He held up his hands, their movements jerky and distressed. “Every morning when I go to work, I walk in and feel sick to my stomach. No one else around me seems to be affected.” He looked at me and swallowed. “I’m sorry—I don’t know why I came. I know your time is very valuable.”

  That was the scientist speaking. It was something much older than science that had brought him here. I studied what I could see of his spirit web without intruding overmuch. If even a weak sensitive could be affected by the Harmonium technology, that was a far bigger story than a retired Shaman who might have gotten a little sloppy with her personal shielding—and far more difficult to fix. Which was a problem I tucked away to contemplate later, when I had both more time and more data. In this moment, I had a soul in front of me who needed help. “Do you have any other unusual symptoms, Jonas?”

  He stared at his knees.

  “We don’t judge here,” said Elleni softly. “We help.”

  He swallowed hard enough that his esophagus looked like a living thing. “When I go out into public now, I can’t stop the itching inside my head. That sounds foolish, I know.”

  “It doesn’t.” I let the crispness in my tone jerk his head up. “It sounds like classic psychic emergence.”

  His eyes widened. “But that happens in children. And I was tested.”

  Scientists and their damn worship of things that can be measured. I raised an eyebrow. “You might want to get retested at some point. In the meantime, you need some basic tools so your energetic network doesn’t keep fraying.”

  He stared at me. “What does that mean?”

  It meant I was going to be looking at the Harmonium project very hard, because adult triggering of psychic capabilities was extremely rare, but that wasn’t what he needed to hear. I held out my arms, gesturing at the woman in the soft green robe. “If you will permit us to join our energies to yours for a short time, we can help you carry the peace of this room with you when you leave.”

  It took a few moments for my words to land, and when they did, he looked like I’d offered him his own minor solar system. “You can do that?”

  Elleni met my gaze, one healer to another. I reached out a pulse of energy, not in the way of KarmaCorp Shamans, but in the way of a Quixali spirit walker. She studied it for a moment and then blended her energies with mine as seamlessly as I’d felt done in a long time. Then we each reached a hand to Jonas. We didn’t need the physical connection to do the work, but it would help convince him something real was happening.

  Together, we formed soft tendrils of light and began winding them like vines around the most damaged areas of Jonas’s spirit web. I heard Elleni’s quiet, pleased inhale when a third presence joined us. Unformed and wobbly, but clearly there.

  Jonas was going to discover he wasn’t a weak and untrainable sensitive anymore.

  We moved quickly, two spirit workers used to getting the job done with a minimum of fuss, and when we finished, we handed the ends of our work to the wobbly presence. Giving Jonas the reins of his own future healing.

  When I opened my eyes again, I had to fight a grin. He looked like he was ready to drop to his knees and propose marriage to us both. I slid back to my stool before anything awkward happened. “You should enroll yourself in some basic training for sensitives.” That wasn’t going to be the end of the changes his life was about take, but it would be a start.

  He rubbed his knees, suddenly uncertain again. “I can’t—not here, anyway. I’m not staying. I’ve applied for a transfer out, and I leave in a week for a tech post in Valencia.”

  A corner of the galaxy with marvelous music and a never-ending supply of delicious food. Sometimes the universe got things exactly right. His newly awakened gift would find sustenance there.

  “I’ll refer you to the Sisters in Valencia. They’ll help you find suitable training.” Elleni reached into a small bowl beside her and lifted up a beautiful, translucent pink stone and a shiny, metallic gray one. She laid the pink one in Jonas’s palm, and his eyes flew to hers. “Oh. What is it, please?”

  “Rose quartz.” She wrapped his fingers gently around the crystal. “It has heart-protective properties. Come home to it at night, and sleep with it against your skin if you can. It will help the light within you breathe.”

  He rubbed it gently against his cheek, a man who had utterly forgotten he was a scientist.

  She handed him the second stone, and he frowned. “I don’t feel anything from this one at all.”

  She chuckled. “Good. In this room, you shouldn’t need it. It’s a protective stone, one that absorbs strong energies. Wear it at work and out in public and anywhere else you feel itchy inside your head.”

  He studied the small lump of polished gray rock intently. “I will. Thank you.”

  I eyed Elleni’s bowl.

  There were lots of ways of protecting people, and not all of them were on KarmaCorp’s list. But weak sensitives numbered in the millions. That would take an awful lot of rocks.

  However, I might borrow a couple. And then I needed to pay a visit to the technology that could make a man’s brain itch.

  8

  This morning clearly wasn’t going to start gently.

  I was here to formulate an opinion about Dr. Miori. As the lithe, frowning woman who ran the Harmonium project strode across the echoing atrium of Epsi’s headquarters, it was very clear that she’d already formed one about me. The disdain streaming off her would have been impossible to miss—and she lost no time adding words in case I had missed her point. “Ms. Ravencroft. I have no idea why my superiors felt KarmaCorp could be of any use in our work, but I’ve been instructed to give you a tour. Please come this way.”

  I blinked. She would have been an abrasive personality at the best of times, but after the ridiculously serene environment that had cradled me overnight and through a simple breakfast, she was a particularly raspy pill to swallow. And one who needed a fast adjustment in our relative positions to each other. “I’m not here to assist you, Dr. Miori. I’m here to learn about your work and how it might impact areas KarmaCorp finds important.”

  And not just Shamans. Jonas had added millions of weak sensitives to my concern list, and a general concern that the Harmonium team hadn’t been careful enough in considering side effects in the realms w
here I lived.

  Dr. Miori eyed me with sharp intelligence and even sharper disapproval. “I find it hard to believe that our work has any overlap whatsoever with a bunch of people who claim to sniff the energies of the universe and sing them a pretty song.”

  Kish would have punched her in the nose, and I hadn’t entirely eliminated that option. Lots of hard scientists were skeptical of the utility of Talents out in the practical world, but few went as far as denying they existed. “You’re impacting the forces in the galaxy at the most basic level. Surely you aren’t surprised that other entities with that same mission are interested in your project.” I had to tread carefully—I had no authority to actually impede her work or its imminent launch.

  “We’re applying a highly complex technology to the matter of cleaning up residual galactic energies and pollutants. Ones which have significant impacts on the safety, comfort, speed, and cost effectiveness of space travel and on the health of our intergalactic environment.” She raised a superior eyebrow. “To the best of my knowledge, KarmaCorp has no ability to achieve such things.”

  It wasn’t my job to disabuse her of her assumptions—not yet, at least. “Those residual energies may have purpose. Or the technology may be having unanticipated side effects.” I watched her closely. I needed to know if she was aware of the Jonas factor.

  She turned away from me. “That’s why I was hired to run the project, Ms. Ravencroft. I excel at managing details others might overlook.”

  If she was hiding knowledge from me, she was very good at it. And she clearly wasn’t someone who was going to let me play with a few switches and run a few informal tests on my unmeasurable woo. Given the constraints I was here under, until I found someone who would, I needed to maintain the impression that I was herdable. “I presume you’ve tested the impact of your technology on planets that happen to be in the neighborhood when the Harmonium technology is being used.”